Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

My mother stopped by my house the other day. While looking for her key to the back door*, she set her Macbook (2013 MBA I believe) down on the table that was sitting there. Unfortunately, that table turned out to be a tile wetsaw, and she consequently plunged her computer into a water bath.

We dried it off and covered it with rice to no avail. The Apple store has declared it dead and sold her a new computer. Fortunately everything important was backed up. But, are there any tips or tricks to either salvaging the computer, or at least to recovering the non-essential stuff that might not have been backed up?

* the clear moral here is to not give your mother a key to your house.

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

My mother stopped by my house the other day. While looking for her key to the back door*, she set her Macbook (2013 MBA I believe) down on the table that was sitting there. Unfortunately, that table turned out to be a tile wetsaw, and she consequently plunged her computer into a water bath.

We dried it off and covered it with rice to no avail. The Apple store has declared it dead and sold her a new computer. Fortunately everything important was backed up. But, are there any tips or tricks to either salvaging the computer, or at least to recovering the non-essential stuff that might not have been backed up?

* the clear moral here is to not give your mother a key to your house.

you should be able to pull the ssd. I had a bubble stuff incident a few years back and the ssd survived it. Just clean it carefully.

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

My mother stopped by my house the other day. While looking for her key to the back door*, she set her Macbook (2013 MBA I believe) down on the table that was sitting there. Unfortunately, that table turned out to be a tile wetsaw, and she consequently plunged her computer into a water bath.

We dried it off and covered it with rice to no avail. The Apple store has declared it dead and sold her a new computer. Fortunately everything important was backed up. But, are there any tips or tricks to either salvaging the computer, or at least to recovering the non-essential stuff that might not have been backed up?

* the clear moral here is to not give your mother a key to your house.

Rice doesn't do much, you need a proper desiccant. Take the computer as completely apart as you can, put the components in fine mesh bags, and bury the bags in silica desiccant gel. If you have silica crystal cat litter, this would work, though it's not as optimized for this sort of absorption as finer gel is. Leave it for a few days. This method isn't a guarantee, but I've used it to salvage machines, including a couple laptop computers that were soaked by a faulty fire sprinkler (those sprinklers are full of nasty water, so I cleaned everything with distilled water before drying). The one thing that is very difficult to take care of is water inside the screen, but some screens are sealed better than others.

Upgrade from a comparable (256GB) Xs Max is $649 after trade-in if anyone else might be interested. There's an option to finance at 0% APR for 2 years, which comes to $27.04 a month. Guessing a lot of folks out there will jump on the latter?

I know I'm in the minority but my 7 plus still feels fine. I like that the display doesn't have a notch and that I don't have to look at it to unlock it or pick it up to see what time it is or if I have any notifications. Its camera still takes great pictures and it costs me $0 to keep using.

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

I know I'm in the minority but my 7 plus still feels fine. I like that the display doesn't have a notch and that I don't have to look at it to unlock it or pick it up to see what time it is or if I have any notifications. Its camera still takes great pictures and it costs me $0 to keep using.

Link to post

Share on other sites

I know I'm in the minority but my 7 plus still feels fine. I like that the display doesn't have a notch and that I don't have to look at it to unlock it or pick it up to see what time it is or if I have any notifications. Its camera still takes great pictures and it costs me $0 to keep using.

I miss the finger print reader. Face unlock is a pain in the ass in the car.

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

I also don't think the cheaper Watch will kill FitBit or Garmin. Hurt sales, most likely. That said, I vastly prefer both Garmin and Fitbit smart watches to the Apple Watch despite them being less capable. I mean as a gadget lover I completely get the appeal but at the same time there's exactly one device I'm willing to accept that I have to plug in every night, my phone. And that's mostly because I don't need or want it at night (again, yeah, I'm a prematurely old fart, whatever). I use my watch as my alarm every day and I want a silent alarm since when I wake up is not necessarily when my wife wakes up. Speaker if SWMBO, she has said Watch 3 and the charging drives her a bit nuts. Despite topping it up while she's in the shower getting ready it has left her stranded without a watch more than just a few times. My current Garmin smart watch is near perfect (for me). It notifies me when stuff is happening on my phone, allows me to clear notifications, ignore phone calls, track activity, track sleep, and I haven't charged it since last Thursday. The battery is sitting at 65%.